National Day of Listening 2012: Giro champ Mara Abbott forging a comeback

On National Day of Listening, the 2010 Giro champ talks about her struggles with self confidence and health, and plots her 2013 comeback

Mara Abbott was on top of the sport. It was July 2010 and she’d just succeeded in conquering the biggest stage race in women’s cycling, the Giro Donne, and wore the stars and stripes of national road race champion. In the afterglow of achieving all she could imagine on two wheels, Abbott found herself descending into a dark place that saw her struggle with self doubt and weight loss, and ultimately walk away from the sport little more than 12 months later.

She’s back and with the support of Exergy Twenty12’s Nicola Cranmer and Kristin Armstrong, Abbott plans a comeback in 2013 — and she says she’s in a safer, healthier and, above all, happier place than when the cycling world last saw her. In this special audio broadcast for the National Day of Listening, Abbott discusses her fall from grace, her struggle to overcome the feeling that she’d lost her purpose, and the pursuit of being the “best in the world.”

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Antonio Pesenti reaches the summit of the Col du Galibier during the 1931 Tour de France in this photography courtesy of VeloPress from Goggles and Dust: Images from Cycling's Glory Days from The Horton Collection. Buy this book